Rethinking Moderation

So Slipshod Slashdot has a story up on a Chinese cryptographer who found a shortcut through the SHA-1 scheme two years ago. While I’m not a cryptographer, it appears to be easier to forge messages or crack hashed passwords which use the SHA-1 algorithm. Unfortunately, even reading the comments at +5 puts the number of comments at 40, including the same dumb-assed arguments about gun control/gun rights that you simply cannot avoid when you stick Libertarians and Liberals (sounds like an RPG to me) in the same room. Shorter: Bullshit about Censorship and Gun-control and Tha Gubment and The Constitution have invaded +5, and since the goal of the point-based moderation system is to save the time of people who don’t care to wade through the same “legalize it!” v. “criminal!” arguments on threads about hashing algorithm security, it should be evident that it has has failed.

So, why not extend or remove the upper limits on the moderation points, and add an option to only show the top n comments and replies to them? That is, at least, more consistent with why I use moderation (to save time).